Mary Gresley, and An Editor's Tales

by Anthony Trollope

My dearest friend among the number was Patrick Regan, a young Irish barrister, who intended to shine at the English Bar. I think the world would have used him better had his name been John Tomkins. The history of his career shows very plainly that the undoubted brilliance of his intellect, and his irrepressible personal humour and good-humour have been always unfairly weighted by those Irish names. What attorney, with any serious matter in hand, would willingly go to a barrister who called himself Pat Regan? And then, too, there always remained with him just a hint of a brogue,—and his nose was flat in the middle! I do not believe that all the Irishmen with flattened noses have had the bone of the feature broken by a crushing blow in a street row; and yet they certainly look as though that peculiar appearance had been the result of a fight with sticks. Pat has told me a score of times that he was born so, and I believe him. He had a most happy knack of writing verses, which I used to think quite equal to Mr. Barham’s, and he could rival the droll Latinity of Father Prout who was coming out at that time with his “Dulcis Julia Callage,” and the like. Pat’s father was an attorney at Cork; but not prospering, I think, for poor Pat was always short of money. He had, however, paid the fees, and was entitled to appear in wig and gown wherever common-law barristers do congregate. He is Attorney-General at one of the Turtle Islands this moment, with a salary of £400 a year. I hear from him occasionally, and the other day he sent me “Captain Crosbie is my name,” done into endecasyllabics. I doubt, however, whether he ever made a penny by writing for the press. I cannot say that Pat was our strongest prop. He sometimes laughed at “Lydia,”—and then I was brought into disgrace, as having introduced him to the company.

Jack Hallam, the next I will name, was also intended for the Bar: but, I think, never was called. Of all the men I have encountered in life he was certainly the most impecunious. Now he is a millionaire. He was one as to whom all who knew him,—friends and foes alike,—were decided that under no circumstances would he ever work, or by any possibility earn a penny. Since then he has applied himself to various branches of commerce, first at New York and then at San Francisco; he has laboured for twenty-four years almost without a holiday, and has shown a capability for sustaining toil which few men have equalled. He had been introduced to our set by Walter Watt, of whom I will speak just now; and certainly when I remember the brightness of his wit and the flow of his words, and his energy when he was earnest, I am bound to acknowledge that in searching for sheer intellect,—for what I may call power,—we did not do wrong to enrol Jack Hallam. He had various crude ideas in his head of what he would do for us,—having a leaning always to the side of bitter mirth. I think he fancied that satire might be his forte. As it is, they say that no man living has a quicker eye to the erection of a block of buildings in a coming city. He made a fortune at Chicago, and is said to have erected Omaha out of his own pocket. I am told that he pays income-tax in the United States on nearly a million dollars per annum. I wonder whether he would lend me five pounds if I asked him? I never knew a man so free as Jack at borrowing half-a-crown or a clean pocket-handkerchief.

Walter Watt was a fellow of ——. —— I believe has fellows who do not take orders. It must have had one such in those days, for nothing could have induced our friend, Walter Watt, to go into the Church. How it came to pass that the dons of a college at Oxford should have made a fellow of so wild a creature was always a mystery to us. I have since been told that at —— the reward could hardly be refused to a man who had gone out a “first” in classics and had got the “Newdegate.” Such had been the career of young Watt. And, though I say that he was wild, his moral conduct was not bad. He simply objected on principle to all authority, and was of opinion that the goods of the world should be in common. I must say of him that in regard to one individual his practice went even beyond his preaching; for Jack Hallam certainly consumed more of the fellowship than did Walter Watt himself. Jack was dark and swarthy. Walter was a fair little man, with long hair falling on the sides of his face, and cut away over his forehead,—as one sees it sometimes cut in a picture. He had round blue eyes, a well-formed nose, and handsome mouth and chin. He was very far gone in his ideas of reform, and was quite in earnest in his hope that by means of the “Panjandrum” something might be done to stay the general wickedness,—or rather ugliness of the world. At that time Carlyle was becoming prominent as a thinker and writer among us, and Watt was never tired of talking to us of the hero of “Sartor Resartus.” He was an excellent and most unselfish man,—whose chief fault was an inclination for the making of speeches, which he had picked up at an Oxford debating society. He now lies buried at Kensal Green. I thought to myself, when I saw another literary friend laid there some eight years since, that the place had become very quickly populated since I and Regan had seen poor Watt placed in his last home, almost amidst a desert.

Of myself, I need only say that at that time I was very young, very green, and very ardent as a politician. The Whigs were still in office; but we, who were young then, and warm in our political convictions, thought that the Whigs were doing nothing for us. It must be remembered that things and ideas have advanced so quickly during the last thirty years, that the Conservatism of 1870 goes infinitely further in the cause of general reform than did the Radicalism of 1840. I was regarded as a Democrat because I was loud against the Corn Laws; and was accused of infidelity when I spoke against the Irish Church Endowments. I take some pride to myself that I should have seen these evils to be evils even thirty years ago. But to Household Suffrage I doubt whether even my spirit had ascended. If I remember rightly I was great upon annual parliaments; but I know that I was discriminative, and did not accept all the points of the seven-starred charter. I had an idea in those days,—I can confess it now after thirty years,—that I might be able to indite short political essays which should be terse, argumentative, and convincing, and at the same time full of wit and frolic. I never quite succeeded in pleasing even myself in any such composition. At this time I did a little humble work for the ——, but was quite resolved to fly at higher game than that.

As I began with the lady, so I must end with her. I had seen and read sheaves of her MS., and must express my conviction at this day, when all illusions are gone, that she wrote with wonderful ease and with some grace. A hard critic might perhaps say that it was slip-slop; but still it was generally readable. I believe that in the recesses of her privacy, and under the dark and secret guidance of Churchill Smith, she did give way to German poetry and abstruse thought. I heard once that there was a paper of hers on the essence of existence, in which she answered that great question, as to personal entity, or as she put it, “What is it, to be?” The paper never appeared before the Committee, though I remember the question to have been once suggested for discussion. Pat Regan answered it at once,—“A drop of something short,” said he. I thought then that everything was at an end! Her translation into a rhymed verse of a play of Schiller’s did come before us, and nobody could have behaved better than she did, when she was told that it hardly suited our project. What we expected from Mrs. St. Quinten in the way of literary performance I cannot say that we ourselves had exactly realised, but we knew that she was always ready for work. She gave us tea and muffins, and bore with us when we were loud, and devoted her time to our purposes, and believed in us. She had exquisite tact in saving us from wordy quarrelling, and was never angry herself, except when Pat Regan was too hard upon her. What became of her I never knew. When the days of the “Panjandrum” were at an end she vanished from our sight. I always hoped that Mr. St. Quinten reconciled himself to literature, and took her back to his bosom.

While we were only determining that the thing should be, all went smoothly with us. Columns, or the open page, made a little difficulty; but the lady settled it for us in favour of the double column. It is a style of page which certainly has a wiser look about it than the other; and then it has the advantage of being clearly distinguished from the ordinary empty book of the day. The word “padding,” as belonging to literature, was then unknown; but the idea existed,—and perhaps the thing. We were quite resolved that there should be no padding in the “Panjandrum.” I think our most ecstatic, enthusiastic, and accordant moments were those in which we resolved that it should be all good, all better than anything else,—all best. We were to struggle after excellence with an energy that should know no relaxing,—and the excellence was not to be that which might produce for us the greatest number of half-crowns, but of the sort which would increase truth in the world, and would teach men to labour hard and bear their burdens nobly, and become gods upon earth. I think our chief feeling was one of impatience in having to wait to find to what heaven death would usher us, who unfortunately had to be human before we could put on divinity. We wanted heaven at once,—and were not deterred though Jack Hallam would borrow ninepence and Pat Regan make his paltry little jokes.

We had worked hard for six months before we began to think of writing, or even of apportioning to each contributor what should be written for the first number. I shall never forget the delight there was in having the young publisher in to tea, and in putting him through his figures, and in feeling that it became us for the moment to condescend to matters of trade. We felt him to be an inferior being; but still it was much for us to have progressed so far towards reality as to have a real publisher come to wait upon us. It was at that time clearly understood that I was to be the editor, and I felt myself justified in taking some little lead in arranging matters with our energetic young friend. A remark that I made one evening was very mild,—simply some suggestion as to the necessity of having a more than ordinarily well-educated set of printers;—but I was snubbed infinitely by Churchill Smith. “Mr X.,” said he, “can probably tell us more about printing than we can tell him.” I felt so hurt that I was almost tempted to leave the room at once. I knew very well that if I seceded Pat Regan would go with me, and that the whole thing must fall to the ground. Mrs. St. Quinten, however, threw instant oil upon the waters. “Churchill,” said she, “let us live and learn. Mr. X., no doubt, knows. Why should we not share his knowledge?” I smothered my feelings in the public cause, but I was conscious of a wish that Mr. Smith might fall among the Philistines of Cursitor Street, and so of necessity be absent from our meetings. There was an idea among us that he crept out of his hiding-place, and came to our conferences by by-ways; which was confirmed when our hostess proposed that our evening should be changed from Thursday, the day first appointed, to Sunday. We all acceded willingly, led away somewhat, I fear, by an idea that it was the proper thing for advanced spirits such as ours to go to work on that day which by ancient law is appointed for rest.

Mrs. St. Quinten would always open our meeting with a little speech. “Gentlemen and partners in this enterprise,” she would say, “the tea is made, and the muffins are ready. Our hearts are bound together in the work. We are all in earnest in the good cause of political reform and social regeneration. Let the spirit of harmony prevail among us. Mr. Hallam, perhaps you’ll take the cover off.” To see Jack Hallam eat muffins was,—I will say “a caution,” if the use of the slang phrase may be allowed to me for the occasion. It was presumed among us that on these days he had not dined. Indeed, I doubt whether he often did dine,—supper being his favourite meal. I have supped with him more than once, at his invitation,—when to be without coin in my own pocket was no disgrace,—and have wondered at the equanimity with which the vendors of shell-fish have borne my friend’s intimation that he must owe them the little amount due for our evening entertainment. On these occasions his friend Watt was never with him, for Walter’s ideas as to the common use of property were theoretical. Jack dashed at once into the more manly course of practice. When he came to Mrs. St. Quinten’s one evening in my best,—nay, why dally with the truth?—in my only pair of black dress trousers, which I had lent him ten days before, on the occasion, as I then believed, of a real dinner party, I almost denounced him before his colleagues. I think I should have done so had I not felt that he would in some fashion have so turned the tables on me that I should have been the sufferer. There are men with whom one comes by the worst in any contest, let justice on one’s own side be ever so strong and ever so manifest.

But this is digression. After the little speech, Jack would begin upon the muffins, and Churchill Smith,—always seated at his cousin’s left hand,—would hang his head upon his hand, wearing a look of mingled thought and sorrow on his brow. He never would eat muffins. We fancied that he fed himself with penny hunches of bread as he walked along the streets. As a man he was wild, unsociable, untamable; but, as a philosopher, he had certainly put himself beyond most of those wants to which Jack Hallam and others among us were still subject. “Lydia,” he once said, when pressed hard to partake of the good things provided, “man cannot live by muffins alone,—no, nor by tea and muffins. That by which he can live is hard to find. I doubt we have not found it yet.”

This, to me, seemed to be rank apostasy,—infidelity to the cause which he was bound to trust as long as he kept his place in that society. How shall you do anything in the world, achieve any success, unless you yourself believe in yourself? And if there be a partnership either in mind or matter, your partner must be the same to you as yourself. Confidence is so essential to the establishment of a magazine! I felt then, at least, that the “Panjandrum” could have no chance without it, and I rebuked Mr. Churchill Smith. “We know what you mean by that,” said I;—“because we don’t talk German metaphysics, you think we aint worth our salt.”